November 25, 2013

Ant Hill

When we ordered our school curriculum we ordered an ant hill.  It came with a certificate to mail order the ants to fill it.  I had looked ahead to what week we would study "I is for insect" and by the time I mailed the certificate, I wasn't sure the ants would arrive by 'insect week'.  Mostly because it said the temperature had to be warm enough and we've had a cold snap here. I'd resigned that we'd have ants for later when we started "I" on Monday... but this arrived in the mail that day!

Live ants!

The boys were excited to help Daddy set it up.

They used a paper funnel to dump the sand in.

Then Derek added the ants.

The ants got busy while the boys watched...


 ..and watched.

And watched!

Insect success!


Ants are interesting and pretty distracting.  I found myself watching them often this week! It was excellent for education too because we would watch the ants do something and go look it up to learn about their habits.

The life expectancy of these ants is only 2-4 weeks.  The fact that I'm relieved by this probably proves that I'm not a pet person!  They probably won't make it until Christmas... so I won't have to ask someone to ant-sit while we're out of town.  :)

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